Thermaltake Jing Cooling Performance

Testing and Results

We measure the CPU temperature of our test rigs when each new HSF was installed, with the CPU at idle (Windows desktop) and under load (by running the smallfft test in Prime95). We used the freeware application CoreTemp to measure the temperature. CoreTemp reads the temperature of the DTS (Digital Thermal Sensor) embedded in the core of every modern CPU. This means the DTS gives a far more accurate reading than any third-party temperature sensor, because its readings are not affected by sloppy BIOS programming or a poorly calibrated external health monitoring chip on the motherboard.

Because we don't have a temperature control chamber, it's more accurate to measure and quote the delta T (difference) between ambient and CPU temperature. This means HSFs that were tested on different days, when the ambient temperature may have varied, can be fairly compared to one another. You'll find the temperature results for the reference HSFs in the graphs. The key question to consider when choosing a new HSF is whether it's cooler or quieter, or both, than the reference Intel and AMD HSFs.

We've rebuilt our CPU thermal test systems to cater for our current recommended CPU sockets, AMD Socket AM3 and Intel's LGA1155. While LGA1366 motherboards are still very popular, they've been around for some time and our recommended cooler, the Thermaltake Frio, is still the best option. As Intel's Core i5-2500K and Core i7-2600K CPUs are just as good as all Intel's LGA1366 CPUs (bar the 980X Extreme Edition CPUs in a tiny number of situations), LGA1155 is now our main focus, especially these CPUs run so much cooler.